Profil was a Norwegian literary magazine which had great influence in the late 1960s and the 1970s. The magazine was founded in 1938 as Filologen, a house organ for the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo. Its name was changed to Profil in 1959. In 1966 the magazine was taken over by a group of radical students.[1] They opposed established literary views, and introduced the modernist literature.[2] The circle of writers that emerged are often referred to as the "Profil Generation".
Between 1959 and 1966 Profil was a student magazine.[4] In 1966 the magazine's editorial board was taken over by a literary group who named themselves as a new generation of modernists.[5]
From 1968 and onwards several of the Profil writers became politically left wing activists, and started writing political poems, songs and novels. Examples of so-called working class literature are Obrestad's poetry collection Vårt daglege brød (1968), Haavardsholm's novel Zink (1971), Solstad's novel Arild Asnes 1970 (1971) and Obrestad's novel Sauda! Streik! (1972).[2] Liv Køltzow's novel Hvem bestemmer over Bjørg og Unni? (1972) is regarded as Norway's first example of militant and socialist feminism.[2]
Profil became a forum for Maoists in the country from 1970 to 1981.[4]
Song books
The Profil songbooks were eight books issued 1972–1975, subtitled Songar frå folkets kamp.[2]
Post-modernism
The magazine disappeared in 1981.[4] It was relaunched in 1984 as a general cultural magazine and was closed in 1989.[1][4] Some of the most profiled political writers from the 1970s later concluded that the working class literature experiment was a failure.[2]
